(a) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an application of a low-temperature and solid-state pyroelectric energy converter, and more particularly, to an application of a solid-state and ceramic pyroelectric energy conversion for producing electric currents when entirely located in a heated environment. Without requiring designs of cooling devices, the application of a solid-state and ceramic pyroelectric energy converter may be entirely dipped into heat, and is suitable for circumstances where heat sources ranging from low heat to high heat are present.
(b) Description of the Prior Art
For an apparatus that produces waste heat such as thermal energy generated by a center processing unit (CPU) or chipsets of a computer, it is necessary to cool the thermal energy accumulated. A fan acquiring power supply from a host of the computer is generally used as a heat dissipation device for cooling down the CPU. There are more advanced cooling methods for cooling down chips. However, these more advanced methods need extremely large power and thus consume significant electric energy, and can hardly be extensively implemented. In recent pyroelectric elements of cooling pyroelectric devices referred by the Taiwan Patent No. 90129981, “Cooling Points of High-Efficiency Cooler for Pyroelectricity”, and Taiwan Patent No. 89127635, “Method for Making a Plurality of Element Chips Using Sheets Made of Pyroelectric Materials”, cooler structures for heat sinks are required. Operation outcomes of these coolers are similarly followed by formation of waste heat that demands additional energy for external cooling. To be more precise, two basic operating modes namely hot and cold surroundings are needed as operating conditions of the coolers. The invention comprises a generator element that can be entirely placed in a heated environment, for example, warm water or any gaseous environment having heat conditions. Operating energy foundations can then be derived and substantial electricity can be generated using a temperature of about 55° C.
As algorithmic speed of CPUs progresses, thermal energy produced correspondingly sum up to significant amounts. Take an Intel Pentium4 CPU for example, thermal energy produced by 1 GHz can reach as high as above 50 W, not to mention that thermal energy produced by 2 or 3 GHz CPUs can even get more than 80 W. The same difficulty has also arisen in communication and optoelectronics industries. In the wake of flourishing of electronic communications and overwhelming numbers of users, demands of forced cooling effects are evidently multiplying. Therefore, it is reversely inferred from such demands that requirements of sources of power needed are greatly expanded, and accumulated waste heat to be eliminated becomes quite large as well. Thus, supposed a design of close loops can be applied in the aforesaid electronic appliances without requiring external electric power for assisting cooling, to be more specific, if waste heat produced by these electronic systems can directly be converted into electric power to generate electricity for activating cooling fans for further accomplishing self-cooling effects, this design is certainly to be a novel realm of current related equipments.
According to statistics by Taiwan Institute of Information Industry dated September 2002, volumes of desktop PCs would reach 105,655,000 and laptop computers would reach 30,003,000 in the year 2002. Provided that cooling fans of each computer need around 3.5 W of power, energy needed for obtaining this heat dissipation purpose globally adds up to 476,000,000 W of electricity, which is approximately equal to a power plant with an output of 500,000 KW. It is apparent that if self-contained energy recycling and utilization can be thoroughly implemented without requiring external energy in the aforesaid electric devices, immense support would certainly be contributed toward global environment arid energy saving.